Pistons at Celtics

“We lost a little bit of our pose on the offensive end, we were slower to get into stuff, plus they turned it up defensively. And it took us a while to regroup and respond. By the time we found a little bit of our rhythm, they scored. Look at their points, they scored 34 or 36 points in the third quarter. Transition was a big part of it and part of the issue was their defense spurred their offense.”

“We just have to work and be a whole lot more efficient offensively. And that’s going to come with time. It’s going to be a process to get offensive rhythm with time.”

“Greg offensively was very good tonight. He was a hub for us. He was very, very efficient.”

Re: Bass and O’Neal: “They were combined for 36 points? They had an ability to get into the paint and score. And the thing is they drew fouls in the paint as well. Brandon gives him a compliment there where he’s an offensive punch. But Brandon’s a heck of an offensive player and he’s a power player that can also make the 17 foot spot up jump shot. It’s great to see Jermaine healthy. He’s really one of the good guys. I didn’t like to see it tonight, but both of those guys were effective. The beauty of Boston is everyone does their part. They all chip in. It’s never really a guy going for 35, they all kind of do the part. They were coming in with a sense of urgency. We just have a lot of work to do. It’s going to be one of those every day grinds where we’re trying to get a little bit better.”

“We don’t feel sorry for ourselves. This is the deal, we’ve got to work to get better. It’s all about grinding it out, working to get better.”

“Paul changes the game for them. Regardless, I know he’s only practice once this whole year, but you just know what he’s capable of doing. He’s an outstanding defender as well. He’s got a pretty decent shot at the Hall of Fame.”

(“There a veteran team. They maybe saw something at half time they felt they could exploit. But they took advantage of it right away. Ray Allen hit a 3 and I think Paul Pierce hit one as well coming off the down screen. They’re a great team and that’s why their always in playoff contention and championship contention. “

“I thought we did a pretty good job on defense of executing the game plan but that 3rd quarter really hurt us. They kind of exploited us on defense.”

“The right way is the only way we’re going to be able to get some wins, so I’m just trying to buy into what Frank is saying and constantly every day trying to learn, so all I want to do is just learn from the system and try to get everything down defensively so I can stay in the games and hopefully that will get us over the top and get some wins.”

“That quarter (3rd) has been giving us problems in all 3 games. We’ve got to come out of halftime with more energy. Just got to come out and withstand those runs. We’ve got to be the ones that make those runs as opposed to the other teams early in the 3rd quarter. “

“They opened up with some big 3s but those 3s came from opposite possessions. I know we focus on defense, but at that moment we had to get 2 good possessions to start the quarter off and we probably would have been better shape. Our mistakes were offensively with those shots.”

“The key was to sustain our intensity at both ends for the whole game, especially against a good veteran team and us being so young it’s important when they go on a run to reestablish ourselves and try to make one ourselves. I thought we did a great job in the first half, the first quarter brought some energy at both ends, made some plays. Then pretty much when our defense gets bad our offense slows down, we get stagnant with the ball. Only down 7 at half time, we come out the gate, it’s the 3rd quarter so we tighten up the defense, and we give up 2 3s on rotations. It comes with feeling each other out. We’ve got a young team. When you had a veteran team it was easier to make those reads without having to say anything. But now it’s a major communication thing and we know what we have to do, we have to get better and better. This is something we have to learn from because KG and those guys do a lot of talking on the defensive end. Hopefully we can understand that just by talking a lot more guys can make things easier and guys can react a lot quicker.”
Celtics Head Coach Doc Rivers

Re what he thought of Jermaine O’Neal’s play: “I don’t know. What’d you think? Because that’s what’s really important…He was terrific. He gave us a great lift, played with great energy. He made shots, but the offensive part, to me, came from him doing his job. Really. I told him that. I thought he was really focused on setting picks and rebounding and doing all the little things. You know, it’s funny, we just talked about this as a group and I said ‘Guys who do that, it’s amazing how you get rewarded somehow.’ And that’s what happened, to me. He kept setting picks on Ray (Allen) – and listen, JO’s no dummy. If you set a pick on Ray everyone’s jumping to Ray and he kept slipping it. He sought it early in the game. And that’s brilliant, though; he did his job by getting Ray open and he benefitted from it. And we benefitted from it.”

Re Paul Pierce doing ‘the little things’: “Just having Paul on the floor – the space is so different. I felt bad because I took (Detroit Head Coach) Lawrence (Frank) out to dinner last night. He said, ‘Is Paul playing?’ I said, ‘No, there’s no chance.’ But, it does. Just the spacing and the ball movement; it was amazing how the ball moved today again. That was nice. I just thought the New Orleans game – whatever the reason, the ball stuck in everybody’s hands. Everybody was trying to win the game by themselves. And that will never be who we are.”

Re more ball movement due to Pierce’s being in the game: “I think it started it and everybody sees it. And listen, if you watch Kevin Garnett play enough, I mean Kevin drives you nuts because he’s open and half the time he’s passing and you’re screaming at him to pass the ball and he still passes the ball, but it usually leads to something good. And everybody else sees that. I mean, it’s infectious. It really is.”

Re bench energy: “It was really good. It was good. I think what you saw is when they’re all together, that bench, they fit pretty well. But when you take one of them out and put them in the starting line-up, it kind of upsets the bench. The thing I didn’t know, honestly, was the Sasha (Pavlovic)/Marquis (Daniels) combination. It was a tough night against them, because they have those little guards that run around screens. I wasn’t sure if Sasha could do that, because we’ve never asked him and I’ve never seen him. He did a terrific job of it. So that’s a good thing to know for us.”

Re Brandon Bass: “I don’t think Brandon has a problem scoring. I mean, really, when he gets it he’s probably going to shoot it. And a good thing, though. He’s an aggressive player and that’s what we want him to be. So he’s going to have good nights and he’s going to have some bad nights probably too; he’s human. But he is a factor. He can take you off the dribble, he’s powerful off the post, and he really shoots the ball well.”

Re: Paul Pierce-- “The scoring overshadows the small things that he does. He’s a very, very good teammate and a personal friend for a long time. He has a very, very high basketball IQ, and he’s very talkative on the court. He knows how to play. And he’s willing to give the ball up on his own. When you make sacrifices like that you impact everybody. It just gets overshadowed sometime by the scoring.”

“In the third quarter we did a better job of just turning up the energy and taking away easy passes and taking a turnover and turning it into some offense.”

“Jermaine was super tonight. He had a lot of energy to begin with. He was active. The things he was able to do for us tonight was tremendous on both ends. He controlled the defensive end. Went toe to toe to control the paint. Offensively, he was aggressive.”

“It’s not easy coming into a gym and getting a group of guys together and putting down a game plan for the whole year and going out to execute. It’s very difficult. It is what it is and we’ll adjust to it.”

“It’s always fun to be back in the garden. It’s an energy boost for us, even when we physically feel tired the fans always find a way to give us some energy, so it feels good to get back home and get a win. Its always tough trying to get a win after loosing a couple in a row, it was a great team effort.”

Re: How were you effective? “Playing extended minutes; when you can get a rhythm, you can get a flow and you can get comfortable with what the team is doing. If you look at the first couple of games I was in and out so fast that it was almost impossible to get any flow to the game; more than anything just concentrating on your tasks, setting screens, moving to the basket, and getting to the open spot. This team is about a team, it’s about find the open guy and helping the next guy and tonight it just flowed for me.”

Re: Jermaine’s performance “He was huge. He showed his length, his presence, he rotated over, he made guys miss around the basket, even if he wasn’t in position, he gradually saw them coming and he gave us great position deep in the paint, and he made his shots. He played a great game for us.”

Re: Teams performance “I don’t think we did anything outside of the ordinary. It wasn’t anything different than what we normally do.”

“I always believe early in the season not to give up easy plays. When you’re not in great shape you have a tendency to get more fatigue. You miss free throws, you miss easy shots, right now for me I’m trying to shorten my turnovers. You hate to look back, when you get deep into the season, and see small little things that you know you should’ve done better so it’s important to have a good start and conditionings a big part of that.”